Suppose is an infinite sequence of integers satisfying the following two conditions:
(a) divides for
(b) There is a polynomial such that for all .
Prove that there is a polynomial such that for each .
Solution
Step 1: Suppose has degree . Let be the polynomial of degree at most with for . Since the are all integers, has rational coefficients, and there exists so that has integer coefficients. Then for all .
Step 2: We show that is the desired polynomial.
Let be given. Now
Since satisfies these relations as well, and ,
and hence
Now
\begin{align*} \text{lcm}(x,x-1,\ldots, x-i-1)&=\text{lcm}[\text{lcm}(x,x-1,\ldots, x-i),x-i-1]\\ &=\frac{\text{lcm}(x,x-1,\ldots, x-i)(x-i-1)}{\text{gcd}[\text{lcm}(x,x-1,\ldots, x-i),(x-i-1)]}\\ &\geq \frac{\text{lcm}(x,x-1,\ldots, x-i)(x-i-1)}{\text{gcd}[x(x-1)\cdots(x-i),(x-i-1)]}\\ &\geq \frac{\text{lcm}(x,x-1,\ldots, x-i)(x-i-1)}{(i+1)!} \end{align*}
so by induction . Since have degree , for large enough (say ) we have . By (1) must differ by a multiple of from ; hence must differ by a multiple of from , and for we must have .
Now for any we have for any . Since can be arbitrarily large, we must have , as needed.